AP Government 2
Terms
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- Unfinished State
- characterized by instabilities and uncertainties. They have undergone several political transitions, from democratic governments to autocratic regimes, both military and civilian, and from one military regime to another.
- Jihad
- holy war led by Uthman dan Fodio established an Islamic empire, the Sokoto Caliphate.
- Acephalous Societies
- Political authority was diffuse rather than centralized, such that later Western contacts described them as “stateless†Because they lacked complex political hierarchies, these societies escaped much of the upheaval experienced under colonialism by the centralized states, and they retained much of their autonomy.
- Indirect Rule
- British rule through policy that allowed traditional structures to persist as subordinates to the British governor and a small administrative apparatus.
- Warrant Chiefs
- ruled by warrant of the British Crown. They weakened the previous practices of accountability and participation.
- Dual Standard
- any code or set of principles containing different necessities for one group of people than for another. (Like a double standard)
- Northernization
- NPC’s policy brought them into direct conflict with their southern counterparts, particularly the Yoruba-based AG and later the Igbo-dominated NCNC.
- Biafra
- Igbo population of eastern Nigeria attempted to secede and form its own independent nation.
- National Policy Reform Committee
- to ostensibly review the constitution and the structure of the federation, with the unstated goal of shoring up his government’s sagging legitimacy.
- Interventionist
- broad license to intrude into major sectors of the economy and society. The goals were to control the Nigerian economy and to marshal the flow of resources from the colonies to the metropole.
- Clientelism
- the practice by which particular individuals or segments receive disproportionate policy benefits or political favors from a political patron, usually at the expense of the larger society.
- Describe the politics in action in Nigeria. What has been the result of colonial independence in Nigeria? Describe the power struggles that have taken place since Independence.
- The politics in action in Nigeria would be described as several struggles that Nigeria has gone through. Obasanjo their president had intentions to reform the corrupt state, reverse its economic decline, and restore the nation’s international stature. The National Assembly set out 3 years later to impeach him. His struggles with the National Assembly are symptomatic of the larger obstacles his government faces in trying to revive the dysfunctional Nigerian state. Opposing forces are rooted in the constant struggle in Nigeria between authoritarian and democratic governance, the push for development amidst persistent underdevelopment, the burden of public corruption, and the pressure for accountability. They have over 250 competing ethnic groups, two major religious traditions, who have repeatedly clashed over economic and political resources, and issues of administrative and legal identity. Low levels of popular legitimacy and accountability, and persistent inability were made to meet the most basic needs of its citizens. The result of colonial independence in Nigeria would be several political transitions, from democratic governments to autocratic regimes, both military and civilian, and from one military regime to another. The power struggles that have taken place since Independence is that there were six successful coups, and it was torn by three years of civil war that claimed over 100,000 military and over 1 million civilian casualties. Today Nigeria remains an unfinished state characterized by instabilities and uncertainties. When they transferred power for a second time to the Civilians, they held their own elections and when they were flawed, the public welcomed a military coup.
- Describe the geographic settings of Nigeria. Discuss the ehtnic regions and ethnic groups in Nigeria.
- The geographic setting of Nigeria is that they are boarded by four countries Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, all of them Francophone and by the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. Nigeria’s boundaries had little to do with the borders of the pre-colonial African societies in the territory that the British conquered. Nigeria was an arbitrary creation reflecting British colonial interests. The consequences of this forced union of myriad African cultures and ruling entities under one political roof remain a central feature of Nigerian political life today. Its location is in West Africa and has an oil-producing status make it a hub of regional activity. The ethnic regions and ethnic groups in Nigeria can be described as six inexact areas or zones. The northwest is dominated by Hausa-Fulani (single largest ethnic group), Northeast is Kanuri, The southwest is Yoruba (2nd largest ethnic group), Southeast is Igbo (3rd largest), the North is dominated by Muslim, Yoruba and Igbo regions of the south stretches across Niger Delta areas and east along the coast as far as Cameroon.
- Explain whether or not federalism and democracy have been successful in Nigeria. How has the power in government shifted in recent years?
- 4. When it comes to federalism and democracy in Nigeria, its kind of hard to say if they were successful. Because of their Unity in Diversity, there is a blend of democratic values. In reality, the legacy of colonial rule and many years of military domination have yielded a unitary system in federal guise: a system with all-powerful central government surrounded by weak and economically insolvent states. But since the return of democratic rule, the state governments, the National Assembly, and the judiciary have been whittling away at the powers of the national executive.
- Discuss Nigeria's dependence on it's oil profits. Also, discuss food production and manufacturing. Why is it considered to be a haven for drug trafficking?
- Nigeria dependence on its oil profits is regarded as a potential political and economic giant of Africa. They don’t have independent growth, put they depend on unpredictable oil revenues, sparse external loans, and aid. Food production and manufacturing has a dependence of self-sufficiency in the 1960s and progressing to heavy dependence on imports. With this comes inefficiency and disinvestment in subsequent decades, sagging to levels not seen since independence. Why it was considered to be a haven for drug trafficking because Nigeria has a heavy in-debtness which gives IMF and foreign creditors considerable leverage over its macroeconomic policies. Democratic government ended the nation’s political isolation, its economy remains subject to the vicissitudes of the international oil market. High oil prices and increasing U.S. consumption of Nigerian oil and gas, but there has been no effective restructuring or diversification of the petroleum monoculture.
- Describe the interventionist state that persists in Nigeria. Has it diminished in scope?
- The interventionist state that persists in Nigeria is a state introduced into the colony in large part to restructure and subordinate the local economy to European capitalism. It was a broad license to intrude into major sectors of the economy and society. Its interventionist state extended its management of the economy, including broad administrative controls and significant ownership positions in areas as diverse as agriculture, banking, commerce, manufacturing, transportation, mining, education, health, employment, and, eventually, oil and natural gas. To promote better macroeconomic management and to toot out endemic corruption has not borne results in the form of economic growth, employment, or the reduction of poverty.
- Explain the cultural dualism that exists in Nigeria. Explain the two public realms? Lastly, describe the regional divisons that exists. What did the North do to make up for their lack of representation?
- 7. The cultural dualism that exists in Nigeria is a clash of customs, values, and political systems between the traditions of social accountability in pre-colonial society, and emerging Western ideas of individualism. The two public realms are communal realm and civic realm under the colonial administration and its successors in which citizenship was universal. Communal realm was stronger in certain respects than the civic realm, posing loyalty dilemma. Morality was reserved for the ethnic or communal realm. Nigerians came to view the state as the realm from which rights must be extracted, duties and taxes withheld, and resources plundered. The regional division that exists is that British policy of indirect rule had profoundly different effects on the northern and southern regions. South experienced both the benefits and the burdens of colonial occupation. In northern Nigeria, indigenous hieratical political structures were better established. British used the local structures and left intact the emirate authorities and Islamic institutions of the region. The disparities between the North and South were the First and Second Republics to secure control of the federal government in order to redistribute resources to the north, while military rulers selectively colluded with northern elites and manipulated their fears and weathered southern resentments. Nigeria’s incredible diversity continually demands constant processes of negotiation and protections of interests that democracy promises, albeit after a difficult period of transition.
- Describe Nigeria's fragile collective identity. How does ethnicity and clientelism impact this?
- Nigeria’s fragile collective identity can be described as, the military governments and civilians have been prone to manipulate for selfish ends due to the division between the north and south. Because of their cultural divisions, threats of Clientelism have fostered ethnic group competition. Clientelism are particular individuals or segments receive disproportionate policy benefits or political favors from a political patron, usually at the expense of the larger society. Patrons are linked to clients by ethnic, religious, or cultural ties which benefit only small elites. It tends to undermine social trust and political stability for economic growth. It reduces the state to an arena of struggle over distribution of the national cake among primarily ethnic clients rather than serving as a framework of governance. Ethnicity here has led to localized ethnic violence on many occasions, and politicians continue to use ethnic identification to forward their political objectives, often divisively.
- Describe Nigeria's impact on comparative politics, especially in Africa.
- The impact on comparative politics is by far the largest country in Africa and among the ten most populous countries in the world. They have human and material resources to overcome the vicious cycle of poverty and autocracy. Nigeria remains the oldest surviving federation in Africa. Nigeria’s multiethnic, multi-religious, multi-class, and multiregional nature makes it an especially valuable case for the study for social cleavages in conflict and cooperation. The U.S. is nearing a demographic transition from a white majority, can learn to find unity amid cultural diversity. Nigeria’s past failures to sustain democracy and economic development demonstrates their dependence on leadership, political culture, institutional autonomy, and the external economic climate. Uncertain whether Nigeria will return to the path of autocracy, underdevelopment, and fragmentation or continue on a course toward democratic consolidation and national construction.
- Section 2 Nigeria
- Section 2 Nigeria
- Rents
- the discretion of leaders spending earnings that formed the main path for channeling money through the economy.
- Informal Sector
- The 70% of Nigerians struggling without access and surviving on petty trade and subsistence agriculture where taxes and regulation rarely reached.
- Vision 2010
- it advocated reductions in government’s excessive role in the economy with the goals of increasing market efficiency and reducing competition for control of the state.
- Shari’a
- several northern states instituted expanded versions of the Islamic legal code
- ECOWAS
- with disproportionately high financial and administrative burden for keeping the organization afloat and inching towards a single currency like an integration European Union style.
- NEPAD
- African governments committed good governance and economic reforms in return for access to Western markets and financial assistance.
- NEEDS
- an ambitious package of economic reforms combined with social development initiatives and promised developments including restructuring the banking sector by the new governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
- EFCC
- indicted a cabinet minister, the inspector general of the police, and the governor of Plateau State.
- Self-Determination
- meant increased local political autonomy and national political representation, with concerns over oil industry pollution in the Niger Delta, primarily on the part of global oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell, as a platform to force alliances with international environmental and human rights organizations.
- AU
- modeled on European style processes to promote greater political integration across the continent.
- Discuss the government's roel in teh economy. Describe Rents and the Rent'Seeking system. How does this impact people who do not have access to this system?
- 1. The government’s role in the economy is that they play the central role in making decisions about the extraction, deployment, and allocation of scarce economic resources. Its premier role in the economy arises from control of the most productive sectors, particularly the oil industry. The Nation’s revenue and hard currency are changed thought he government. Discretion of leaders in spending those earnings is known as rents that channel the money through the economy. Those who control the state become the gate keepers of contracting, licenses, and other areas of economic gain. Economic and social life became throughout politicized and consumed by rent-seeking behavior which is competition over politically regulated economic gains (rents), furnished to those with political connections. How it impacts people who do not have access to this system is that 70% are struggling and are surviving on petty trade and subsistence agriculture with informal sector of the economy, where traces and regulation rarely reach.
- Discuss the history of Agriculture in Nigerian Society. What three things undermined the Nigerian sector during the 1st republic.
- 2. The history of Agriculture in Nigeria Society is that at one time, Nigeria was self-sufficient in food production at the time of independence. In late 1960s, emphasis shifted to the development of nonfood export crops through large-scale enterprises. Exclusive state attention to large-scale which left out small farmers and received scant government support. Food production suffered and food imports were stepped up to meet the needs of a burgeoning population. Agriculture was the central component of the national economy in the First Republic. The Biafra War reduced palm oil production in the east. Severe drought in 1969 caused a famine in 1972 – 1974. And the Petroleum industry caused a total shift in economic focus from agriculture to petroleum production.
- Explain what started the economic decline in Nigeria. What happened as a result of this? How was the oil boom a double-edged sword?
- 3. What started the economic decline in Nigeria was that by 1978, the government had outspent its revenues and could no longer finance many of its ambitious projects and they were forced to borrow money to make up the deficit, causing external debt to skyrocket. The oil boom was a double edged sword because it became a source of external dependence and has badly skewed the Nigerian Economy. Nigeria relies on 90% of its exports earning and about 3 quarters of government revenues. Military and civilian regimes neglected the agricultural sector and weakened the Nigerian economy. To was to compensate for the sharp fall in world oil prices after 1981 and descended into crisis.
- Describe the economy under Babangida's regime. How do para-statals fit in?
- 4. The economy under Babargida's regime developed an economic structural adjustment program. World Bank and international financial institutions actively supported them. The SAP increased economic constraints arising form the continued dependence of the economy on waning oil revenues, debt, difficult balance of payments, and lack of fiscal discipline. How para-stals fit in is that the government includes large shares in major banks and other financial institutions, and manufacturing construction, agriculture, public utilities, and various services. Because so many were sold, the state remains the biggest employer as well as the most important source of revenue.
- Have national plans worked in Nigeria? Why or why not? How did/do the NESG and Vision 2010 impact them? What has Obasanjo done to renew focus on economic reform? Lastly, how does Nigeria's debt impact reform?
- 5. National plans have not worked in Nigeria because national plans have been prepared by ministries of fiancé, economic development and planning. The reasons they didn’t work because of effective database for planning and a great lack of discipline in plan implementation. The state strives to dictate the pace and direction of economic development, but lacks the tools and policies will deliver on its obligations. The NESG and Vision 2010 impacted Nigeria by advocating reductions in government’s excessive role in the economy with the goals of increasing market efficiency and reducing competition for control of state (V2010). For NESG it affected Nigeria by planning efforts based on coequal participation of government and private sector representatives. What Obasanjo has done to renew focus on economic reform by unveiled an ambitious package of economic reforms combined with social development initiated called National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy. A 2nd anticorruption agency established the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. His first anticorruption the ICPC, established in 2000 has yet to prosecute a single prominent figure. Nigeria’s debt impacted reform by Buoyant oil revenues which help float the economy though poverty is not gone and basic questions remain basic questions about the sustainability of growth without a more diversified productive foundation. Though the National Assembly showed little in clination to spend within the nation’s means and showered funds on wasteful projects such as a half- billion dollar stadium. It cannot earn enough from the export of goods to service its foreign debt relief which eats over a quarter of the national budget and also meet the populations basic needs. The Paris Club approved debt repayment packages, repurchases and write offs that would effectively reduce Nigeria’s external debt by 90% within two years.
- describe the Nigeria social welfare
- 6. The Nigerian Social welfare can be described as greatly suffering. Emphasizing the reduction of state expenditures has forced cut backs in spending on social welfare. Budgetary austerity and economic stagnation have hurt vulnerable groups such as the urban and rural poor, women, the young, and the elderly. Though they may have failed to develop a national social security system mutual aid is needed to fill the gaps. Provision of health care and other social services such as water, education, food, and shelter, remain inadequate in rural and urban areas. The government ahs made AIDS a secondary priority and the United Nations predicts that the 6% will increase to 10% of those to be infected by the end of the decade (15 million Nigerians).
- These are three main cleavages in Nigeria: Ethnic, Religious, and Regional.- describe each one. Expound on the regional cleavages and discuss the impact Abacha had on this. How does MOSOP figure into this cleavage?
- 7. Ethnic cleavages can be described as competition among the largest groups centered on access to national economic and political resources. The dominating ones; Hausa-Fulani, Igbo, and Yoruba. It has created generated tensions that sap the country’s economy of much needed vitality. Religious cleavages affect economic and social stability. In the north are Muslims and middle/eastern are predominantly Christian. Several Northern states instituted expanded versions of the Islamic legal code “shariaâ€. Physical attacks on Christians, Muslims, and members of ethnic groups have escalated outside their ethnoreligious homelands. For Regional, the military tried to maintain some measures of ethnic and religious balance, but the Babangida regime became increasingly northern-dominated and more willing than any of its predecessors to manipulate Nigeria’s ethnic divisions. Abacha’s secret hit squads used his regime of closed universities and detain a number of activists in the south. Abacha affected other groups such as Ogoni, Ijaw, and other southern minorities of the oil- producing regions were brutalized by military and police forces when they protested the scant oil revenues remitted to the region. The MOSOP was under the leadership of Ken-Saro-Wiwa. MOSOP under Saro-Wiwa effectively blended claims for self-determination, which in this case meant increased local political autonomy and national political representation. Many other Niger Delta minority groups have subsequently followed MOSOP’s lead in pushing for a combination of self-determination, political rights, environmental concerns, and demands for greater control over the oil pumped from their lands.
- Describe the gender differences in Nigeria and how the women of the North and South are at different levels of participation.
- 8. Because of Gender differences, Nigeria is till governed by traditional practice, which is largely patriarchal. Women have not succeeded in transforming their economic importance in to political clout. Woman’s association in the past tended to be elitist, burban based, and mainly concerned with issues of trade, children, household welfaring and religion. Women are grossly underrepresented at all levels of the governmental system; only 8 of 469 national legislators are women. In the south, northern women’s NGO’s at first focused on less political issues and political organizations emerged such as the 100 women groups who sought to elect 100 women to every level of government. Tenets of religion have been regularly used by Nigerian men to justify women’s subordinate status. Though in general, the women’s groups have been more dynamic in developing income generating projects to make their organizations and constituents increasingly self-reliant, compared with made-dominated NGOs that depend heavily on foreign or government finding.
- Describe how Nigeria has been a regional leader. Give Examples.
- 9. Nigeria has been a regional leader due to the formation of ECOWAS and has carried a disproportional, high financial and administrative burden for keeping the organization a float. They were voted in 2000 to create a single currency as a step toward a European Union (style integration). Nigeria under President Obasanjo has sought to mediate crises in Guinea-Bissau, Togo, and Ivory Coast, and in Cargo and Zimbabwe outside the ECOWAS region. Many Nigerians now flock to the not Ghanain economy for work and to countries across the continent, including far-off South Africa.
- Explain Nigeria's relationship and dependence on the West. Why are they so dependent? How does oil impact some abuses going on in Nigeria?
- 10. Nigeria has a clear dependence on oil which was a source of weakness not strength! Today they remained dependent on Western technology and expertise for exploration and extraction of its oil reserves. They are highly visible and influential member of OPEC selling 2 million barrels of Petroleum daily. Britain, France, and Germany have over $1 billion in investments. Oil wealth and great economic potential have tempered the resolve of Western nations in combating human rights and other abuses. The AU promotes greater political integration across the continent. African governments committed good government economic reforms in return for access to Western markets and financial assistance. Nigerian economy is the poorest in the world in a 1997 World Bank Ranking.